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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104753">a seat at the table</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobbvanth/pseuds/cobbvanth'>cobbvanth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Come Eating, Confusing and Conflicting Thoughts, Dubious Consent, F/M, Finger Sucking, Fingerfucking, Force Choking (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Rough Sex, Spit Kink, Wax Play</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:55:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,205</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobbvanth/pseuds/cobbvanth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>serving as a shy med-bay healer for the First Order, you're surprised to receive a letter from your commander inviting you to dinner.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Poe Dameron x You, Poe Dameron/Reader, Poe Dameron/You, poe dameron x reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Miscellaneous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a seat at the table</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i made him so slimy i’m sorry this is v indulgent </p>
<p>title and themes heavily inspired by dinner and diatribes by hozier &gt;:)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The room is dark, heavily shadowed, the void of space outside the ship muting every chrome and durasteel furnishing polished to perfection so that to look inside from the doorway is like staring down into a tube, obscurity dancing along the edges of your vision. In front of you a long, mahogany table commands your attention at the room’s center, candelabras - something you hadn’t expected to be on the Star Destroyer or within anyone’s possession at all anymore, the items out of time, antiquated and almost sinister in their potential to be dangerous - dotting it’s smooth, finished surface; illuminating plates of foodstuff and sugar thin wine glasses. Smelling of heady oak and singed roses and of death - the decay of rotting books and something far more malevolent.</p>
<p>Hesitant, your boots make almost no noise as you walk further into the room flanked by two heavily armed storm troopers, their painfully white armor pristine, blasters held in their hands. Their presence pushes you forward more than your own volition, aware now more than ever that you’re shut off from each exit like the rest of an artery blocked by a blood clot causing muted, heavy panic to blanket your shoulders at the realization that you cannot leave. A large part of you immediately wonders what would happen if you tried anyway. Would they let you? Could you turn around, walk back to your quarters, and be allowed to forget that this ever - <em>almost</em> - happened? </p>
<p>Or are you thinking too much about this as a <em>choice? </em></p>
<p>The door across the room opens with a noise much softer than the inhabitant of its entryway warrants. No different than any of the others that dot the hallways, but you had, stupidly, foolishly, believed for a second too long that it would cry out - that anything preceding him arrived with a certain level of violence. You’ve never been this close to him before, have only witnessed him in fleeting moments stalking through corridors or when making speeches, yards away from you on a stage built on some frozen planet so cold the feeling in your fingers and toes had started to lessen into nothing as you stood there listening to him talk. Another time in medbay, exactly once. He had been injured and part of his face was covered, not that you could tell what was going on from the swarms of healers and medical droids that surrounded him. You had wanted to help, had gone to help, but the curtain had been drawn and you lacked the rank and expertise needed to be in the room, let alone to be treating him, so you went back to your research, quietly pretending like you couldn’t hear him screaming. A few months ago, now. </p>
<p>Sometimes the gutted fury of it still echoes in your ears. </p>
<p>So you couldn’t possibly know that despite the stories you’ve heard and the terrifying images they conjure, it is much more telling when evil comes quietly. </p>
<p>“Commander.” </p>
<p>The helmet tilts upwards, catches the flame of the candle that casts the other side of his face in shadow, and you get the vague impression that he is looking at you from down the bridge of his nose. </p>
<p>“Won’t you sit?” His voice, somehow different when it isn’t passing through the semi-solid air of tundra or roaring in a sterilized room, is both what you had expected and nothing at all like what you were anticipating. </p>
<p>A softness to it that isn’t soft, but something close. Rich and smooth and deliberate. The way metal sometimes can be. The unserrated edge of a knife. </p>
<p>You’re still trying to figure out how you got here. You had no idea he even knew of your existence until a note - not an order given to you by some nameless medbay commander, nor a message suddenly appearing on your holopad - but a piece of paper, slipped through the vertical space of the door to your quarters. </p>
<p>Handwritten, neat and condensed in black rishi eel ink, with the simple instructions to join him for dinner.</p>
<p>Thinking about it now distracts you. That softness again, hardened slightly by impatience. </p>
<p>“That wasn’t a question.” </p>
<p>You wait for him to approach the table before doing so yourself. You’re not stupid. You know that if he had any intention of killing you, he would have done so already, certainly wouldn’t have made the scenery so elaborate, but that doesn’t stop the bitter tint of dread you know he can sense from crawling up your spine and settling itself between your shoulder blades as you incrementally close the distance separating the two of you from each other. </p>
<p>Separating <em>him</em> from <em>you.</em>  </p>
<p>He isn’t known for being genial or an excellent host. And although a table and some space would never be able to protect you from what he might do, it had supplanted your fear with some outstandingly ridiculous placebo effect a stupid confidence that if you tried hard enough, you might be able to get past him and escape with your life, as if the closer you got, the stronger his gravitational pull became, and the faster you’d go colliding with him like some pitiful, spare moon. </p>
<p>He waits for you to sit down before doing so himself, making a quick and dismissive flicking gesture towards the troopers stationed near the doors, and they disappear behind them within seconds. </p>
<p>Adjusting awkwardly in your seat, you dare yourself to speak. “What do you want from me-” </p>
<p>“I wasn’t sure what food you liked, so I had ‘em make a few things.” </p>
<p>You shut your mouth quickly, averting your gaze to the empty plate in front of you, embarrassed that you had interrupted him, but mainly worried about the kind of consequences you’d now be facing for such a daring and idiotic act as questioning him. Rolling your lips between your teeth, you fight the urge to bite down hard on the soft, spongy tissue of your cheek, your head bowed, your hands beginning to sweat where they remain reverentially folded in your lap. </p>
<p>In the second that passes, you process what he has said. A lie, no doubt. You know that if he wanted to, he’d be more than able to access anything he desired. It wouldn’t be hard, and you’d be entirely defenseless against it. You don’t know what it would feel like, though, and that maybe worries you most of all. Not the potential for what he might find - nights spent in secret yearning staring up at your ceiling, red faced and debased at the dissent of your conflicting thoughts - but what you’d suffer when and if he decided to go looking. You know that it’s painful from the cries that you hear, from the disoriented Resistance members sent into your care to be treated so that they remain alive and conscious long enough to either give the information freely or have it ripped from them through force. </p>
<p>You’re also aware that whatever you have conjured up about his interrogation methods is almost entirely speculation, the workings of your reactive imagination functioning with the little pieces it’s been given. The fact is that there’s no way of knowing exactly what it’s like until it happens.  </p>
<p>For all you know, he could make it so that you couldn’t feel a thing. </p>
<p>You’re not sure which is more frightening. </p>
<p>Any other thought you might have about this, however, is stifled by your surprise. Lost inside your head, you wouldn’t have noticed his anger until it was too late, but what you’re met with instead is his laughter, and you look up to see him leaning back in his chair, his elbow against the left armrest, his gloved hands folded together, a smirk somewhere beneath the mask. </p>
<p>“Curious girl. Don’t worry,” he dismisses, his tone startling in its playfulness. “We’ll get to that.” </p>
<p>You watch silently as he makes a subtle nod with his head. In your periphery, two men identical, of course, to the ones that had just left appear from somewhere in the darkness. Lacking weapons and with their hands clasped behind their backs, their feet pressed together standing at attention, you comprehend quickly that their purpose here tonight isn’t to guard - or rather contain - but to serve. Resolute and uncomfortably formal, you can’t bring yourself to say anything to them. </p>
<p>“Tell them what you want.” </p>
<p>Distracted briefly from your unease by being given something to do, albeit an incredibly stressful task anyway, you shift your focus to the table again, looking over it with more purpose. Delicacies you don’t recognize and couldn’t name even if you tried surround you, filling you with the fresher, newer concern of embarrassing yourself by being unable to do something as simple as placing your order. The cafeteria rarely serves anything more than half-cooked rations and broths the kitchen staff tries to pass off as soup, all prepared and offered with varying, ambiguous edibility, so most of your meals consist of quick nutrition bars, portion bread, and energy drinks bought from the vending machines near your sleeping quarters, your dinner time slot disregarded entirely to instead take small breaks as you work, most of your time spent in the lab anyway. </p>
<p>Pointing to the nearest dish with little authority in your movement, you shift your gaze between the void-like t-shape visor and the plate of something that resembles a salad, avoiding the heavy gaze of the man across the table from you entirely. “I’ll, um, I’ll have that, please.” </p>
<p>Wordlessly, the trooper fills your plate with leafy greens and different vegetables, then resumes to his statuesque posture, awaiting his next directive. </p>
<p>“Add some roast bhillen to her plate-” </p>
<p>Aware, suddenly, that your lack of specification may have offended him and come off as indifferent to the effort he’s put into dinner, you quickly apologize. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” </p>
<p>His head turns towards you. “You must really enjoy interrupting me.”</p>
<p>“I-I-of course not, sir. It’s just that I’m not used to-” </p>
<p>Maker, what have you gotten yourself into? Despite the efforts you’re making to seem cordial and deferential, you can’t seem to do anything right, and in your nervousness to keep your life in good favor have managed to cut him off not just once, but twice in the span of only a few minutes. So far, he’s shown you a significant amount of mercy. You aren’t looking to find out what happens once you’ve tested the bounds of his tolerance for you. </p>
<p>“Relax. I know.” He dismisses, and as he keeps talking you notice the condescension in his voice, the same tone that might be used on a child who is too young to know any better. “Not your fault Jakku hadn’t exposed you to the finer things in life. It’s impressive that you’ve managed to get this far.” </p>
<p>You try not to let the backhandedness of his arrogant compliment sting too much. </p>
<p>“You started out as what? A lab assistant, right?” </p>
<p>Unsure whether his question is rhetorical or not, you can’t decide whether to answer, caught still in the suffocating exhaust of his almost praise and trying to decide whether to let yourself be pleased by it, the warmth in your chest like smoking out a bee hive. Instead of getting annoyed, however, his perverse delight with you makes him chuckle. “You can talk now, honey.” </p>
<p>“Yes, when I first enlisted. I’m head of the Order’s synthskin research now, sir.” </p>
<p>Cautiously, you pick up your fork. For all the things that awful desert planet had taught you, table manners and how to eat when not sitting in a chow hall, surrounded by hundreds of faces and the murmur of voices or alone in your room wasn’t one of them. </p>
<p>“The shit they used on my face.” </p>
<p>Inhaling sharply, you quickly fix your widened eyes and resist the stunned smile tugging threateningly at the corners of your mouth. Stabbing through a piece of orange root vegetable and something green, you wait to bring it to your lips to answer first, hoping you don’t sound a portion as stupid as you feel. “Similar. I don’t know all the details, but what we typically do for an injury like yours, Commander, is apply bacta in combination with a skin graft, using manufactured tissue from the patient’s cells we have grown to minimize rejection and to ensure that all they’d be left with was a scar. The technique also doesn’t require the need to be maintained or replaced the same way synthskin does. Our research is more for the purpose of mechno-limbs, sir.”</p>
<p>You watch him, notice that in the time you had been explaining your work to him that he had shifted in his seat and was now resting his chin against the knuckles of his closed fist, listening with what might have been genuine interest. When your eyes meet the visor, his head tilts downward, and you can only guess what kind of expression is beneath it. Looking away and bringing your fork to your mouth, you go to take a bite. </p>
<p>“So if I got my arm hacked off-” The Commander stops himself short. “Ah ah. Left one’s for salads, sweetheart.” The gloved hand under his chin points to his right, to the left of your plate. Setting the utensil down, you quickly replace it with the correct one, mortified and burning in flush. </p>
<p>“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?” The way he says it should make you indignant and angry, but for some reason all your addled attention can zero in on is the hint of earnest affection in his voice, like he’s charmed by your incivility. </p>
<p>Twirling the fork between your fingers, you stare down at your plate and shake your head. “Not when it comes to things like this, no, sir.” </p>
<p>“Sorry…” The word is half-way out of your mouth when an invisible pressure feeling vaguely like a thumb and two fingers makes contact with your cheeks and presses the soft flesh of the inside of your mouth into your molars, using its grip to tilt your head in his direction, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to be uncomfortable and garner your full attention. </p>
<p>“<em>Stop</em>-” he warns, “apologizing.” </p>
<p>All you can do is nod. </p>
<p>You expect the phantom impression to be gone, then, his point having gone across, but it doesn’t leave. Rather than disappear, it travels, the strain of his thumbprint on your cheek alleviated only for it to be replaced by the drag of the pad of his thumb along the slightly chapped skin of your bottom lip, the scent of leather filling your nose. It dips slightly into your mouth, presses lightly against your teeth before tugging downward, and somewhere among your jumbled and dead-end thoughts you register a chuckle coming from the other end of the table. He’s playing with you. This wide eyed, clueless creature who sometimes dreams of this - has, somewhere far off and foggy, been like this with him before, clawing whispers at the edges of your sleep  - but before you can speak, before you can even focus or arrange what you’d even say into something coherent, the sensation is gone. </p>
<p>“You feel that?” </p>
<p>“Not anymore, sir. W-What should I be feeling?” </p>
<p>“Our connection.” He rises to his feet. The legs of his heavy chair scrapes against the metal floor. You hadn’t noticed the napkin in his lap until he tossed it onto the table, unused and untouched since he had unfolded it neatly across his knees, and you should have realized sooner that this dinner was never going to be about eating in the typical sense when he sat down and his helmet remained untouched too. </p>
<p>You don’t want to admit that you know what he’s talking about. Surely he knows by your file that you hadn’t joined the Order in search of some almighty purpose, in pursuit of greatness or in an effort to further their interests because you believed in their insidious ideology. That it had simply been a matter of not starving to death on a planet constantly at odds with the inhabitants living on it. You had joined to survive. You hadn’t joined to be picked out like this. </p>
<p>The urge to retreat from him gets stronger like polar ends of a magnet being brought together the closer he gets as he rounds the table and without any ceremony or forethought, you get up, filled with an irrational bravery borne from your contrition that finally gets you to move, to make the decision your earlier deliberations struggled with. </p>
<p>But you don’t get far. Only a few steps, not even two feet away from where you’d been sitting, an unseen cord wrapped around your waist, tugging you backwards. The two storm troopers who had been standing silently off to the side appear in front of your vision, and they both grab you by your biceps, hauling you back into your chair. One of them urges your chin in his direction. The other swivels your seat. The imperceptible force spreads your legs and pins each ankle to the front legs of the chair. </p>
<p>“You might want to rethink your technique.” </p>
<p>“Commander-” Terror and fear, heavy and volatile, creates a suffocating ball in your throat. He descends, his hands curling around the armrests, close enough now that if you dared to pick up your head, your breath would fog up his shiny obsidian and plasteel mask. </p>
<p>“Oh, sweet girl. I know all about that. About the <em>guilt</em> that bounces around in that pretty little head of yours.” His left hand rises, his first two fingers tap against your skull. </p>
<p>“We get people like that sometimes…the ones that shoulda had this - <em>defiance </em>trained out of ‘em…and well…you know I can’t allow that.” There’s a whine in his voice, a false sympathy, an imitative regret for the things that must be done, as if this purge were something integral to the galaxy rather than an active and malicious choice. This is it. You had been wrong earlier. He brought you here to murder you, to squash this insignificant yet out of place cog, dressed it up because he’s sadistic and takes some sort of weird, demented pleasure in softening his prey before he sinks in his teeth. </p>
<p>Except there’s a coldness against your ear when he invades your space even further, an action far from a killing blow, that you have to fight the impulse to tug away from, your gaze set adamantly to the floor, the grimace of a trapped wild animal on your face, and he keeps talking, whispering now, low and hoarse. </p>
<p>“But not once…in the thousands of minds I’ve dived into and poked around in…did I find thoughts so filthy and achingly hungry for me.” </p>
<p>Ashamed beyond measure, his confession of the true nature of your thoughts brings on tears that sting your nose; blurring your view of the already darkened room, of his right shoulder in your periphery, the cape hanging from them, the slope of his arm, his chest, the floor. You sniffle pathetically and grit your teeth, ignoring the blossoming warmth of being this close to him that unfolds through the muscles of your lower abdomen and down the insides of your thighs. </p>
<p>He tuts, leans back and rests his forehead on your own. You can only imagine the face beneath the cool durasteel currently overtaking your line of sight. Maybe it would help if you pictured him as ugly as his actions, but you doubt it. You’ve fantasized about him far too much and for far too long to let something as inconsequential as his appearance have any bearing on your feelings for him. Besides, you’re sure that he’s beautiful. “Don’t cry. There’s nothin’ to be embarrassed about.” </p>
<p>Plucking at the last vestiges of your ill-fated courage, you speak up with a voice like a bow string pulled back to the point of breaking. “So this is why I’m here, sir? Because I amuse you?” </p>
<p>A tear rolls down your cheek. He catches it and wipes it away. </p>
<p>“No. I mean, yeah.” He corrects himself. “But lots of things amuse me…you’re here because you’ve been reaching out to me.” </p>
<p>Terrified and confused, you don’t know what he means. If anything, you’ve done your best to keep these intrusive daydreams to yourself, have even made attempts at suppressing them, combating the thoughts by reciting your lab manual or safety regulations, going over these tedious, elaborate terms and conditions until it becomes a rhythm you can get yourself lost in, allowing you to fall asleep with nothing more in your head than Section 5 Subheading B: Chain of Custody - Sample Handling. How these could have arrived to him without his purposeful searching is beyond your understanding. </p>
<p>“I don’t know what you mean, sir.” </p>
<p>“<em>Oh.</em> I‘m thinking you do know.” Devious. Pleased. “Let me let you in on a secret just in case…those shameful, <em>embarrassing</em> dreams you’ve been having, sweet girl?” He creates a fraction of space between your bodies to curve his hand around the column of your throat, your pulse thumping beneath his leather-clad fingers, his grip requiring you to tilt your head up. “That’s the force connecting us.” </p>
<p>The ball in your throat drops into your stomach. </p>
<p>“You and me…honestly, it was kinda annoying at first. Distracting. I’d get these visions in my head. These thoughts. It wasn’t until I made my trip to the medbay facility that I realized the voice belonged to you.” </p>
<p>It hadn’t occurred to you that while noticing him, he had the ability to notice you back. Astonishing that in his pain filled fog, he had been able to sense you were in the room at all, or hear your voice when you ask how you could help. You know almost nothing about the force or how it works. You don’t want to believe that it would intrinsically tie you to a man like him, someone capable of destroying worlds if he was compelled to do so, someone so combustive that to be near him is like desperately trying to blow out a match. You, this quiet and meek thing tucked away doing research. No one extraordinary. No one worth being tethered to him by the universe. </p>
<p>He drops his hand and stands to his full height, sensing your denial. “Leave us.”</p>
<p>The troopers step out of the room, their footsteps synchronized and fleeting, their departure signaled by the still gentle whirring of the door closing behind them. </p>
<p>With them gone, he starts to take off his gloves, pinching his fingertips and tugging the fabric up, tossing each onto the table unceremoniously. Immediately, your eyes are drawn to his hands. Broad palms. Clean and neat. Rough looking, but you won’t know until he touches you, if he touches you. You swallow, look away from them with a heated face. </p>
<p>“Let me show you.” He raises his hand to your temple and this time you flinch, closing your eyes and crying out. He pauses, frowns deeply. Dropping to his knees, he takes ahold of your wrists and guides your hands to the sides of his visor. “Go ahead. Take it off.” </p>
<p>“I-I don’t think that I can, sir.” </p>
<p>“And I don’t think I was asking. You can look at me. I’m sure you’ll like what you see.” </p>
<p>“Commander, I-” </p>
<p>His hands press yours against the mechanics that release the seal of his helmet. “Don’t be shy.” </p>
<p>Left with no other option than to obey, you do as he says with shaking hands. The visor exhales, feels heavier now with both its released weight and the burden of such a responsibility, the front piece extending outwards with a few mechanic ticks. The intricacy of it almost startles you into letting go, but once you’re sure that it’s finished moving, you carefully begin to lift it up and off his head. </p>
<p>The first thing you notice is his hair. Dark brown and wavy, curling behind his ears and away from his neck, just shy from peeking out of his helmet and touching his collar. Tinted slightly with silver. </p>
<p>The next thing is the diagonal scar that cuts its way across the bridge of his nose, down beneath his right eye - dark brown, too, rich and almost black - and across his cheek, fading into the corner of his mouth. Still fresh, still healing. Fascinating. You nearly reach out to touch it, thinking about the procedure the healers must have approached this with, whispers of an enemies lightsaber travelling through the hallways, murmured in disbelief that someone had gotten that close to him with a weapon so dangerous. In a few more months it will be less pink and more brown, thinner and flatter too, revealing less and less as time goes on about what had happened and the efforts taken to save the Commander’s life. </p>
<p>So much to learn. So much to see. </p>
<p>He’s so beautiful it aches. </p>
<p>“Alright, let’s try this again. It’s okay. I won’t make it hurt.” </p>
<p>His blood-tongued assurance does very little to persuade your stiffening muscles to loosen up, but he doesn’t wait for you to settle anyway, taking advantage of your stunned docility at seeing his face to cup your cheek, his other hand catching his helmet as it slips from your grip. </p>
<p>There’s no way to accurately describe it. It’s not a non-feeling but not quite solid enough to be one either, his presence almost like the tension of a headache that hasn’t become painful yet. Surely nothing you’ve ever felt before, unable to be compared even a little bit to any of your limited life experiences. You attempt to put voice to it anyway, to make it more solid and less like this is just some grotesque nightmare, aware that as he skims the surface of your mind his presence moves like water along an overheated surface suffering a drought, refreshing in its iciness, seeping. There’s a pressurized element, though, as if the occupation of another person has put your brain at max capacity. This is what they feel when they’re with him, these unlucky Resistance members. Where do they find the energy to fight it? </p>
<p>An echo you recognize as not belonging to you murmurs its snakelike, humored agreement.<em> Y’know, they aren’t as strong as you think. </em></p>
<p>You can’t speak, can’t even really think, everything so saturated by him that it’s impossible to move around, to do anything more than watch the most recent of your dreams as he brings it to the surface - hazy, jumbled, confusing the way dreams often are remembering them after waking up, but with slightly more coherency. Clips of him standing alone in his quarters, staring out seemingly at nothing. His eyes shifting, his eyebrows furrowed in angered confusion. Then he outstretches his hand, and you notice the pale orange aura haloing his glove. He had started to mumble, to call out, questioning. </p>
<p>This had been two standard months ago. You’re most disconcerting and alarming vision yet. When you had woken up you could only grasp at the fear and anticipation it had left you with, this strange loss of something that was almost fully understood. A name in your head forgotten. </p>
<p>The sound of your own voice hitting your ears, temperate and distressed, afraid for him.  </p>
<p>
  <em>Poe? </em>
</p>
<p>A sick combination of relief and distraught replaces his existence. You know what’s happening now, know that you aren’t losing your mind, but that doesn’t make this good. Comprehension, if anything, has only made it - this - that much worse. He had been telling the truth. The Force was bringing you two together, tying the strings of your lives into a tight knot, with on discernible reason other than that it could, and it did. </p>
<p>“Your name is Poe.” </p>
<p>Poe’s slanted grin reveals a row of perfectly white teeth set against a shadow of stubble, brutishly handsome. They don’t make the kind of art his face would be in anymore. “Haven’t been called that name in a long time. Kinda weird.” </p>
<p>There’s something in his expression that you can’t identify. </p>
<p>He caresses your cheek, the gesture more igniting now without the leather keeping his actual touch from you, your skin already too sensitive from it and straining. “But to hear it coming from you?” </p>
<p>His fingers rest in the small hollow curve at the back of your neck. His thumb traces along the curve of your jaw, then rests beneath it, slanting your head back and pulling you forward, away from the security of your chair to place his forehead against yours again. “My perfect piece of stardust…” </p>
<p>You’re helpless. Before you had believed you needed to get as far away from him as possible, even with your conflicting feelings fighting for their chance to throw their hat into the ring, however now - now it’s different. Now you aren’t sure what to do. You aren’t sure if ignoring this is the best course of action. If this is as inevitable as he makes it seem, then why fight it. Why fast when you can devour.  </p>
<p>Why risk the pain of battle when you can submit to the pleasure of succumbing? </p>
<p>Poe shakes you slightly, just enough to have you really focusing on him, on the way his eyes - swallowed by the blackness of his pupils - shift between your own, your lips, your throat. “That’s everything to me.” </p>
<p>His mouth swallows the sharp exhale that his kiss forces from your lungs, stokes the warm slow liquid burn of desire in his belly and the corresponding throb of his cock half hard beneath the fineweave sherculién-cloth of his tunic. You’re soft and placid in his hands, already so willing for him he almost regrets that he hadn’t had to take this from you, that you hadn’t put up a fight, given him a chance to see you bare your teeth; but your dreams hadn’t prepared you for this, not even a fraction of it, the real thing so overwhelming that it’s all you can do to take it, to follow his lead, to hold onto him hoping that he doesn’t encounter the impulse to let you fall. </p>
<p>There’s a cacophony of noise as dishes and trays hit the floor succeeding the absence of his hand. You don’t need to look to be aware that everything that had been on the table in front of you was now halfway across the room, tilted and spilled and spoiled. You almost have enough time to register what that means before he’s on you again, lifting you from the chair, settling you down in the space that once was home to your nameless salad. </p>
<p>“Poe…<em>Commander.</em>” He barely affords you the ability to say his name, to breathe, his kiss vicious and greedy, predatory in the way he leans over you, slotted between your legs, trapping you beneath his body. </p>
<p>The use of his title is enough to coax him into full-blown arousal, his cock twitching, needy against the constraints of his underwear as you squirm forward, closer, the lip of the table digging uncomfortably into the muscles of your lower back ignored instead and overwhelmed by the sudden and ceaseless aching in your cunt. You want him so bad that it hurts. That the roof of your mouth threatens to collapse under the weight of your frustrated, pitiful longing for him. Your tongue filled with nonsense, sinuses burning with a new wave of tears, the abruptness of your emotion taking you by surprise. </p>
<p>“Sir, please.” </p>
<p>Poe exhales, low and shaky, struggling with the restraint it’s taking not to destroy this before it’s even begun. Even his typically steady, incredibly portentous hands are vibrating from the want of it as he slides down your body, lifting up the shirt of your robe. His palms slide across your ribs, moving up and across the sweet swell of your chest, your rib cage expanding in a doleful inhale as they go up, up, up - the rough pad of his thumbs brushing over the peaks of your stiffening nipples. His lips drag downward in opposition to the exploration of his fingers. His teeth nip and bite. His mouth warm and wet. His tongue soothes away the prickle of every spot sucked into the delicate skin of your stomach, leaving a shiny trail that catches the flickering flames of the candelabras still on the table. </p>
<p>He looks up, makes eye-contact with you, reaches for the base of the sconce and tugs it towards him and it isn’t until the heat of each candle is near enough to your face to make it balmy and illuminate your features in wavering shades of red and yellow that you realize what his intentions with it are. </p>
<p>But he doesn’t act with it yet. He moves on, guides your pants down until they pool at your ankles, then with a subtlety you didn’t think he was capable of, genially takes your boots off, letting them hit the floor with quiet thumps. </p>
<p>The next to go is your underwear. He hooks his fingers underneath the band and you shift a little without protest as he eases them down past your knees, your calves, the moment unfolding so slowly that it seems like he’s taking pleasure in just doing this - in undressing you, pulling at and watching the frayed seam of your self-control fall into tatters. </p>
<p>He was to be starving. </p>
<p>He savors instead. </p>
<p>“Been dying to taste you for awhile now, sweet girl. Look at you. So fucking needy.” </p>
<p>That indiscernible contingence returns, that extension of himself. It glides along the insides of your knees, spreads your legs, leaves you entirely exposed to him and the cold, recycled air of the Star Destroyer, then pins you place with a firmness that you instinctively struggle against until Poe warns that if you keep this up and don’t stop squirming, he’ll make it so that you cannot move at all.</p>
<p>He smooths his blaster calloused palms down the tensing muscles of your belly, across the curves of your hips, then down the outside of your thighs. It’s easy to just keep taking more - you give it away so willingly and he is covetous, selfish. He’d swallow you whole if he could, keep you hidden away somewhere only for himself. And you’d probably let him. He doesn’t know yet, why the Force has brought you together. Ideas that you’d rule together float around, obvious and daring him to stab at them and make it a reality, but he’s hesitant - can sense something deeper, something more promising that’s hidden just outside of his reach. </p>
<p>An answer that might only be unlocked by you. </p>
<p>Poe’s breath fans hot against your cunt, torturous in his proximity. Still, he does not move closer. Continues to touch the perimeters of where you want him most just shy of too-hard, an experiment to see if you’ll break. His hands roam down and down and down until he’s brushing the bare skin at the crux of your thighs, your muscles trembling and tightening as you suck in a breath, looking down the expanse of your body at him as if at the top of a pulpit, a sort of profound symbolism in the irony of your positions, his eyelids heavy and his gaze clouded like a man before something holy and you think that maybe it would be a nice thought but he still isn’t touching you, not in anyway solid enough to count but then he’s - </p>
<p>The pad of his pointer and middle fingers press against your cunt. He slides them upwards, spreads you open, and you’re so wet that they come away sticky and slick-shiny when he aborts the movement and pulls back, and it’s all you can do to whine, on the cusp of dissatisfaction but unwilling to voice your grievances and give him an excuse to pull away from you completely. Frustrated that he seems content enough to just look at you, watching you clench and flutter and tighten around nothing. </p>
<p>“Filthy girl. Already this wet and I’m barely touching you.” </p>
<p>The candles you had forgotten about move and you watch as one of them is plucked out of the pricket. Poe must notice the way your heartbeat ticks, your breath increasing in nervous anticipation - wondering if he’d actually burn you or if he has other plans with it - because he chuckles, then kisses the inside of your thigh, slowly beginning to make his way downwards, methodical and painstakingly deliberate. </p>
<p>He’s hard enough that it hurts. Could get away with fucking you right now. But this is an exercise in his self-control. He must temper himself. </p>
<p>Wax, hot and cream colored, drips from the tilted candle onto your left breast. </p>
<p>You jerk away from it, hissing through your teeth as Poe scrapes his own over the marks he leaves dotted onto the tender flesh covering your abductors, and he can taste the salt and sweetness of your skin, can feel the desperation coming off of you in waves you aren’t even aware of, waves you wouldn’t possibly be able to control yet as you shudder in a full body tremor, another drop of wax, followed by a third, marking a trail on your sternum and down the length of your body, stopping at your belly button. </p>
<p>“Commander, please. I don’t know-” Words are difficult. Every bit of you feels useless and high strung and electrified to the point of torment. </p>
<p>“Shh. Shh. I know it’s hard, but you gotta be patient. This’ll all be worth it, sweet girl.”</p>
<p>Somewhere far off, somewhere more intelligent and distinct and lucid you get the impression that he’s speaking with a forked tongue, his impudence given a double meaning, that he isn’t just talking about the gratification of finally having his mouth on your pussy, something more serious and impending instead, but you lack the finesse and brain power to dissect it, to focus on anything more than the ensuing feel of his lips and the press of his nose against your cunt - his fingers there, too, the wax still weeping, burning as it hardens, his thumb pressing and dipping into your entrance. </p>
<p>You push up into the heat of his face, into his palm, in small and paralyzed motions. Poe closes his eyes and groans, his breathing turned heavy and ragged, dark eyelashes against a striking face, and you want to reach out for him, to touch him, yet you can’t. This must be inappropriate. This cannot be how whatever this thing is - the force - is intended to be used, and you curse its very existence for keeping him from you, desiring nothing more than to feel the softness of his hair, to have it beneath your fingers, to be in some semblance - even if it isn’t much or even matters - of control. </p>
<p>“The sooner you let that stupid idea go, the better you’ll feel.” His voice in your head, honeyed in its promises of peace, disorienting in its disembodied buzz. Another giveaway. Another thing you should be paying attention to. </p>
<p>Poe adds a third finger, feels you tense around the stretch of it. He runs his other palm up the slope of your stomach as he fucks you open, traces lightly over the skin surrounding each imperfect circle of wax, then crooks his fingers up and opens his eyes again at the soft, wet sound you make above him, shivers working through your body like he had attached you to a live wire. Everything is building, mounting, becoming more pressurized, and it feels like you’re never going to recover from it, as if you’ll be stuck constantly on the cusp of this for the rest of time, so the noise you make when his tongue finally brushes across your clit is closer to a sob, keening and intense like he had ripped it from somewhere deep within your chest. You aren’t going to last much longer like this and if that’s embarrassing you don’t care, not right now, not with him curling an arm under your legs and tugging you partly off the table, hitching your thighs wide open on his shoulders and pulling you closer. </p>
<p>His groan sends electric vibrations that stun your diaphragm and snag at your lungs, your breathing arrested, his tongue dragging up in one, broad, flat stroke that has you dizzy and dazed into obedience. Each pathetic mewl you make hits him hard - the burning bright strain of his own arousal knotted tight in his stomach, tensing his thighs, buzzing and setting him alight with just how badly he wants to bury his cock inside you. </p>
<p>And you try, still, stupidly, to rock up against him but his grip is too tight and you’re not going anywhere, not with his mouth curling around your clit with just enough force to make you shake, your entire being as tense as a bomb about to go off. </p>
<p>When you come, then, he hasn’t retracted himself, hasn’t pulled out of your mind or a fraction away from you for a second and it fills your vision with white; the entire galaxy narrowing down to the arch of your spine, the muscles in your legs and thighs and stomach as they tense, become taut and liquid, your fingernails digging into the varnish of the table, his energy working itself through you in waves until you’re lax, collapsing and shuddering, whimpering when he kisses you just one more time, gently. </p>
<p>Poe stands up, studying you, flushed and spread out and so, so, pretty, twitching with aftershocks, looking back at him from under heavy eyelids. He leans over you, kisses the area just below your collarbone, drags his nose against your skin and nudges it into your pulse, taking a deep breath. </p>
<p>“Poe…” You retreat from his hand as it touches lightly at your still stimulated cunt, your expression pulling back into overstimulated anguish. </p>
<p>He lifts his head, places a kiss to your temple. “No, no. I’m not done with you yet.” </p>
<p>The fingers in between your legs dip again, then curl, your confusion at this railroaded by the muted pain of being stimulated again so soon and the sight of him bringing the digits to his lips and sucking them into his mouth. Slow. Purposeful. Until they are clean. Then he takes them out of his mouth, uses his spit to mark you, dragging it down your breastplate. </p>
<p>“You gonna let me fuck you?” It’s not a question, but you nod anyway. </p>
<p>“That’s a good girl. I knew you would.” </p>
<p>You reach up, touch his face, free now from the constraints he had kept you immobilized with; his cheek, the stubble along his jaw, tracing a shaking fingertip across the scar that lances over his nose, wondering again, briefly, how they had done it - how he still manages to look so heartbreakingly handsome when really the sight of him should terrify you - does, for the most part. </p>
<p>But none of that matters right now as he pulls himself out of his pants, wanting to be inside you so fiercely he’s shaking from the need of it, to close the distance between your bodies and become connected. To be as one the way fate has destined you to be, longing for the fitful and pacing energy living in the center of his chest to be quieted. </p>
<p>You run your hands over the bunched-up muscles of his back, bore your blunted fingernails into the thick fabric of his robes, embittered by your conflicting states of undress, yearning for just a little bit of something vulnerable from him, a piece that would make him more human, but you know you won’t be getting it - not now, at least, perhaps not ever, even as you share the air, caught in the tide of each other’s exhales. </p>
<p>Poe sits up and pulls away, his cock in his hand, pressed down between the spread of your legs, his breath hissed through gritted teeth and he - </p>
<p>Just <em>rocks</em> - forward. </p>
<p>And you whine, his heavy clothes up against the insides of your thighs, the backs of them, too, when he lifts your legs up and bends your knees back towards your chest, making you sweat, feel sticky and overheated and on the verge of something again, something that has to fight its way through your stomach. And it feels like he’s breaking you open, over and over and over again, so full that with every movement you slide upwards on the table, your heart in your throat, speech now entirely shut off, pleasure coiling at the base of your spine. </p>
<p>The rasp of his inhales and exhales is the only thing you can hang onto, everything so obscene and depraved that you shudder in a second, more intense full body flush. Poe stares down at where you’re joined as if fascinated by it, his lips curled over his teeth, dark brows furrowed, sweat pooling at his temples and slicking back his hair. Animalistic. Dangerous. Scary in any other circumstance, but thrilling nonetheless, and you watch him watching as he spits - pulling out of you almost entirely before pushing back in. </p>
<p>He curls over you, grinds himself against your pelvis, lifting you up and greedily touches each vertebrae, trying to touch as much of you as he can. He never stops moving, never relents the drag of his cock. It’s all you can do to bring him closer, to press your chests together and hang on, hiding in the curve of his neck, breathing into the hollow of his throat, kissing his adam’s apple. </p>
<p>“You feel so good. So good for me, sweet girl. You gonna come again?” He murmurs, strangled and oppressive, somewhere between desperation and pride. </p>
<p>“Yeah, you are. I know you got one more for me.” </p>
<p>You cry his name, empty and fierce, and his hand glides down your left leg, pinches your ankle before tossing it over the bend of his elbow, shifting the angle, and you’re far too gone to care about how uncomfortable it is, looking for leverage or purchase or anything stable enough to get you through this as your own hands gather at the fabric covering his biceps, the air in your lungs dissolving. Poe’s pace quickens, he tilts his head up, so near that your lips touch with every puffed breath. You don’t care that he doesn’t kiss you, that he only gets close to it, his strokes steady and hard but quickly losing their focus. He’s close, won’t last much longer, but neither will you, and as he reaches down, just fucking - skims the little bundle of nerves between your legs its enough to send you careening. </p>
<p>He feels it, the very moment you come for him, can tell that it’s too much, clenching down so tight around his cock that it drags a noise from him so depraved and drawn out that for a moment, your ego bloats, feeling like for the first time since you’ve stepped into the room you have an ounce of influence over him. </p>
<p>You say his name, repeat it as he urges you to work through it, praising and sickly sweet in his contempt. There are things he wants to say, secrets he wants to reveal that lay heavy on the back of his tongue, resting in his esophagus like thorns, and he imagines sharing them with you, sharing everything, as his own orgasm is ripped from him, his cock throbbing inside you before he pulls out, his hips tensing, his hand working himself through it and coating your stomach in white. </p>
<p>The smell of smoke brings you back. </p>
<p>You notice slowly that the candles have gone out. </p>
<p>Poe steps back, tilts his head up towards the ceiling and chuckles, then scrubs his face with his hands and tucks himself back into his pants. You look down at yourself, naked and raw, trail your pointer finger down your knee, sloping further still down your thigh, stopping at your tummy, collecting his seed, making sure his focus has returned to you before swirling the digit into your mouth. </p>
<p>Unable to control himself, he surges forward - kisses you <em>hard.</em> Ruthless.</p>
<p>When he leans away, you know that whatever this has been is over.  </p>
<p>“What happens now, sir?” You have questions, so many that they pile over one another and lose their discernment in their eagerness to be asked, this simple, succinct and perhaps stupid question the only one you’re able to get out before it’s lost. </p>
<p>With his physical connection to you gone and the bond your life mingles in with his own dampened by your plummeting euphoria, you feel - not for the first time - incredibly lonely. Abandoned. Now that it’s been brought to your attention, you can perceive the way he’s closing off. Closing a door that had been opened. But you lack the ability to ignore it, to turn it off or guard yourself. Stuck entirely at his mercy, your intimacies rigged with terror. </p>
<p>“What happens now is that I go speak to someone. You return to your quarters. And in time-” </p>
<p>He lowers his voice, filling the space in front of you again, pinching your cheeks. </p>
<p>“You’ll learn to love me.” </p>
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